kiss had been on their cheeks and the father's hand had been laid on their heads in blessing; they had sobbed their farewells to each other, and a long distance of miles, and the infinite of a new love, were between them. Not far from the old home, Betty sat in the homely house of her husband, who looked proud and happy in his nice new suit of homespun, as he heard her call the old folks who sat in the corner father and mother, and saw that they smiled and were pleased with the young wife he had brought home. They were old and feeble, and could not work any more, and perhaps it was less for the love which the young woman brought them, than for the bundle of white coverlets and sheets, and the little tow-bag full of bright silver dollars, that they were pleased and smiled as they sat beside her in the corner. "It is a poor home," says Richard, "and you will miss much that you have been used to, I am afraid; I am to blame, perhaps, and yet I could not help loving you; and loving, I could not help wishing you to be my wife; and now that you are so, dear Betty, you shall be spared every thing that my toil and my love can spare you.' And in these words and in the kiss that goes with them, the wife would have found compensation for all the trial and all the suffering that awaited her, could they have been foreseen. وو The old people talk apart of a new roof for the house-new plastering for the garret; of another window that must be made; for that as they grow blind the light is too little for them; of a loom that must be bought, and then of sheep that must be had, so that there may be something to spin and weave; and then the farm must be paid for, and if a few acres of woodland were added it would be well; and in short, there is no end of the things they plan to be done with the little bag of money Betty has brought, and with the more which she and Richard shall earn-for what are youth and strength for but to be spent in work?—there is no holiday in their plan at all. Richard hopes that Betty does not hear all this, but she does; and though he puts his arm about her, and lays his cheek close against her face to drown their selfish calculation, she hears all the same, and the stifled sob that shakes her bosom is not more for the tender light of her own good mother's eyes, than because of the sharp glances that measure her ability to milk and to spin. The tallow candle burns almost down, and the old people find their way to bed by the flickering wick, having told the young folks they must be up early in the morning and begin life in earnest; and Richard breathes freely again. He asks Betty why she is so silent, and she answers it is because she is so happy ; but he feels that for the first time in her life she is concealing the truth from him, and for the first time in their intercourse he finds it necessary to dissemble, and makes pictures in the future, bright as only fancy can make. The brown mare shall be hers, and he will spare corn enough to buy her a saddle, and he asks her whether its cushion shall be blue or red, and assures her, though she says nay, that the bridle-bit and the stirrup shall be silver, and that he will order them made the first time he goes to town, and that she herself shall go with him in the little cart, and buy a silk gown as fine as that which the rich Mr. Fairfield bought her sister Polly that day. She shall have a new bureau too, in which to keep the pretty linen she has brought from home; and one drawer she shall keep locked away from him, and in that she shall keep the purse that was her father's marriage gift, and add to it from time to time all the money she can save from the management of the dairy. But Betty puts the purse in his hands, and says she will have no lock and key to divide them; that all she has, and herself too, are his; that she only wishes she had brought more, and that she herself were better and worthier of her new position-she does not say worthier of him. And so the fire burns down, and the rain comes against the window; a little of it drives through a pane that is broken, but Richard places himself between her and that, and she does not feel it; and as he soothes and caresses her, she ceases to listen to the wind as it blows rougher and rougher; she forgets the thick warm walls of the homesteadforgets even Polly-and but for one troubling shadow from the future would be blest. Poor Betty, enjoy all you may; drink in all love's whisper, full as it is; let your faith root itself deeper if possible in the goodness and purity of the heart, for which you have, in part at least, sold away the love that was tried and true you will need to grasp and to treasure all the bright moments Heaven shall give, and they all will not be enough to cast even a little light from shadow to shadow along the way that is before you. And thus with the rain against the windows, and the wind in the leafless trees, the clouds above, and the winter coming on, we leave them, and for a moment turn to a brighter scene. Polly has no time to weep-no time to listen to the winds; but their noise is so broken by the high walls of the houses of the city that it would have lost all its old melancholy sound if she heard it; she is so bewildered by the lights about her that her thoughts reach not to the lost light of home; so many gay voices speak to her, and so sweet and so often falls one whisper on her ear, that she forgets the broken farewell of the gentle Betty; or if sometimes she thinks of her, it is to say, "She has all she loves, even as I, and she must be happy as I; she is not fretting about me, I am sure-how were that possible?" So are we prone to measure the feelings of others against our own. It was a higher and a wider roof than the one Polly had left that was over her now, and within her memory so many lights had not been consumed in her father's house as were burning about her now-the very draperies at the windows were worth more money than the broad meadow where the cows fed at home. Bridal presents were shining all about her, and as far as she could see the future gave excellent promises. And the old people had set the house in order after the wedding, and had prayed for blessings on their children, till their supplication had been answered in peace to themselves, and were calmly asleep. The mill was still, the cows lay together in the meadow, and in the spinning-wheels the spiders stopped the making of their silken meshes for a while; but with the morning some changes would come, and others and still others with the weeks and the years, for change is the order of being, and one generation passeth away and another cometh. Children are born, and old men and old women die and are heard of no more; youths and maidens love and weep, and young men and young women marry and are given in marriage; households are formed into perfect circles, and broken and narrowed together, and broken again, till only one or two are left who wander apart and grow weary, searching for that which in this world is never found--perfect rest; and then cometh the end, and the old house is repaired, or a new one made, and another family begins, and work and hope for a time go on as though the sower were surely the reaper, and the planter of the tree had promise of the shadow. And so it is, beginning and ending, ending and beginning always. (To be continued.) [For the National Magazine.] THE VILLAGE GRAVEYARD. BY MRS. H. C. GARDNER. SLOWLY, sad and slowly, Down the silent way, 'Mong the graves so lowly, With affection holy, Do the mourners stray. Mute is all the music Of the cloudless morn; Bells, erst chiming gladly, Now are tolling sadly, "Gone, forever gone!" Down the silent alleys, 'Mong the humble dead, 'Mid the fondly cherish'd, Ah! so early perish'd! Do the mourners tread. Gilds each little bed; Stricken in its prime; Known no more in time. Of this world of wo. A MODEL CHARACTER. IN A STUDY FOR YOUNG MEN. favorable to his religious development. He received urgent Christian letters from them occasionally, and in one of his answers he discloses the state of mind-so irresolute, so wretched and yet so much better than reckless-which all men of refined moral nature, but of unrenewed hearts, sadly and habitually know. He writes: N reviewing, somewhat informally, Dr. Binney's late book, we have contemplated Buxton as a man and a philanthropist; it remains for us to notice more distinctly his character as a Christian. His religion, indeed, was no mere matter of the pew or the closet-it characterized him as a man and a philanthropist, and we have, therefore, seen already its demonstration; but we may justly recur to the subject with a more exclusive at-that which is not bread.' I know the poverty tention. Binney dwells upon it at length, and with rather homiletic particularity. We propose only to glance at a few of the marked traits of his Christian character. And our first remark is, that his religious life began and was continued to the end with the distinctive qualities of an "evangelical experience." It was not a mere process of moral self-culture, the ripening of good natural dispositions; but commenced as a moral renovation, and continued as a gracious discipline and growth. He was a striking example of the difference between "morality" (so called) and holiness. He was always "moral" from childhood, notwithstanding his natural buoyancy and love of sport. None of the corruptions so incident to youth is known to have infected him. He was even minutely scrupulous about his word during the thoughtlessness of boyhood. While at school, an usher made a trivial charge against him; he denied it. "I have never known the boy to tell a falsehood," said the principal, Dr. Burney, "and I will not disbelieve him now." About his twentieth year he betook himself, with unusual interest, to the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and gave other indications of religious feeling, such as would be taken by many people of moderate opinion as a conclusive proof of a welldefined Christian character. He had not yet attained that character, however at least in his own estimation. And not till the excitements of a public career began to attract him forward-the usual temptations to the neglect of religion among public men-did it take profound hold upon him. The influence of the refined and endeared circle of Earlham Hall was "I see the excellence of the walk you have chosen, and the madness of dedicating myself to anything, but to the preparation of that journey which I must so shortly take. I know, that if success shall crown all my projects, I shall gain that which will never satisfy me, of our most darling schemes-the meanness of our most delicious prospects-the transitoriness of our most durable possessions-when weighed against that fullness of joy and eter My reason tells nity of bliss which are the reward of those who seek them aright. All this I see with the utmost certainty-that two and two make four is not clearer; and how is it, then, that with these speculative opinions, my practical ones are so entirely different? me that these things are utterly indifferent; but my practice says, that they only are worthy of thought and attention. My practice says, 'Thou art increased with goods, and hast need of nothing;' but my reason teaches me, 'Thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.' "I have in this letter divulged the train of mind." thinking which is constantly recurring to my "Constantly recurring to my mind;" yes, and as constantly to the mind of many a reader of these lines. It is the invariable suggestion of a nature not wholly self-abandoned to frivolity or vice. There is, to a thoughtful mind, no significance in life except so far as it is subservient to the future well-being of the soul. Reflecting men of undecided religious character, therefore, carry with them habitually this sense of being "wretched and miserable." Alas for them that they hesitate so much to take the one step more which introduces the struggling spirit into the benign and refreshing light, the open sunshine of " peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." They have but to be decided, and, by an act of entire and open consecration, give themselves to God through the mediation of Christ, in order to dissipate the spell of their misery and find "rest to their souls;" and yet how often do they linger through years, at the very threshold of that rest-made only the more wretched by its near contrast Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. A Study for with their equivocal and hazardous state! Young Men, &c. By Rev. T. Binney. It was during a severe attack of sickness A MODEL CHARACTER. that Buxton was brought to this more "I gradually grew worse; and when the dis- This, we repeat, was an "evangelical experience "-marked on the one hand by the simplicity, and on the other by the permanency (as his whole subsequent life showed) which are usual to such an experience. It was the moral renovation of the man-the" new birth ;" and true to its character as " evangelical," it was by faith. When the medical gentleman who attended him observed that he must be in low spirits, "Very far from it," he replied: "I feel a joyfulness at heart which would enable me to go through any pain." "From faith in Christ ?" he was asked. Yes, from faith in Christ," was his reply, 66 and, mentioning the clear view he now had In a letter written soon after his recovery, to his Earlham friends, he says of this illness : "I looked upon it when I was at the worst (and have not yet ceased to do so) as a gift, and a blessing, and the choicest of my possessions. When I was too weak to move or speak, my mind and heart were at full work on these meditations, and my only lamentation was, that I could not feel sufficiently glad or grateful for the mercy, as unbounded as unmerited, which I experienced. This mercy was to know the sins of my past life-that the best actions of it were but dust and ashes, and good for nothing; that, by the righteous doom of the law, I stood convicted and condemned; but that full and sufficient satisfaction had already been made by Him who came to save sinners; and such was the ease and confidence with which this conviction inspired me that death was not attended with a terror." This, we again say, is the genuine process of religious experience as taught by Christianity and by what are called evangelical Churches. We have dwelt upon it the more because it is so seldom recorded in Buxton's sphere of life. It is the process, be it alsosaid, which, however it may be cavilled at by philosophical skeptics, can alone recover thoroughly vitiated men; which alone produces real saintliness, inspires religious heroism, or sanctifies martyrdom in our fallen world. Casting away self-dependence, it nevertheless secures the profoundest conviction of self-responRenouncing the merit of good sibility. works, it nevertheless prompts the whole THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE. life to them. Often immediate and fervid in its effects, it nevertheless, more than any other religious influence, permanently impresses the life of the man. years afterward Buxton wrote that "from Fifteen that day to this I have never been harassed by a doubt of our revealed religion," and on his recovery he commenced a career of moral and religious labors which terminated only with his glorious death. The three years following, his "commonplace books," says his biographer, "are chiefly filled" with memoranda of his labors for the Bible Society. He "annually made himself complete master of its affairs and proceedings," says his son. He entered soon upon his efforts in behalf of the amelioration of prison discipline, in connection with his noble sister, Mrs. Frye. He wrote an effective work on the subject. He gave his coöperation as an active manager to the cause of missions, foreign, and especially domestic. He opened his country house for Sundayevening gatherings of the villagers and his neighbors, to whom he expounded the Scriptures. He entered Parliament as a Christian, and, prompted by his new sympathies, gave his attention to such reforms as most naturally appealed to the moral sentiments, and which, from that very fact, were at the same time the most important and the most liable to be disregarded by the usual motives of political ambition. The suttees of India, the Mauritius slave trade, the sufferings of the Hottentots, prison discipline, the reform of the criminal code, the entire abolition of British slaverysuch were the noble subjects of his attention and labors throughout the rest of his life. talents to be their leaders, such as Mackintosh, Brougham, &c.; but these were not morally qualified to head the conflict: and struck stifling blows; but they never they stepped into the fray ever and anon, showed the strength of moral purpose, the calm defiance of sarcasm and calumny, the consecration to duty and selfsacrifice which Wilberforce and Buxton brought from their closets of prayer into the parliamentary sessions, and which sustained the one through a twenty years' fight against the slave-trade, and the other through nineteen years of struggle against colonial slavery and other moral evils of the realm. Buxton says himself, in a letter to the devoted clergyman whose ministrations he attended, that "whatever he had done in his life for Africa, the seeds of it were sown in his heart at Wheeler Chapel." portant lessons of his life for the study Precisely here is one of the most imof young men. "It shows the possibility," says Binney, "of a man's combining a very laborious outward life-a life of business, trade, politics-with one of deep and eminent spirituality. Men busily occupied in the affairs of the world, behind the counter or the desk, 'in chambers' or at the house,' often imagine, or perhaps complain, that they have no time to attend to spiritual subjects, or for the discharge of religious acts. If reminded of David as a soldier writing his psalms, or Daniel at court directing a kingdom and yet keeping daily his hours of prayer, they can discover reasons, in their peculiar aids as inspired men, to render their example inapplicable to them. Here, howNow, we hesitate not to affirm, that the active and all alive in his worldly duties, ever, is a man of our day, and one ever peculiar greatness of Buxton as a states--not said to have been attentive to devout man, and his success in public measures, grew chiefly out of this determinate religious character. Had he and Wilberforce been of the usual style of British statesmen-the Walpoles, the Townshends, the Cannings, or even the Burkes, the Foxes, and the Pitts-we doubt that those great ameliorations, those high moral developments of British policy, which attended their political labors, would have ensued. We doubt, indeed, that they would have been seriously thought of. There were really good men-men of virtue, but not of piety-who coöperated with them; men who were fitted by superior communings with his own spirit, and to earnest and holy walking with God, but proved to have been so, by papers bearing the stamp of sincerity, and indicating at constancy of his efforts to preserve it by once the reality of his religion and the culture and to evince it by consistency." tions of his fervent and manly piety given Beautiful and incessant are the exhibius in his memoir by his son. He was not only the father but the priest of his household, conducting divine worship on its altar daily, and preparing himself for the service by meditations which rendered it instructive to his family. It need not be |